AN APPEAL ON BEHALF OF THE BOERS.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3014, 22 February 1881, Page 4

AN APPEAL ON BEHALF OF THE BOERS.

The Dutch Press is naturally devoting much attention to the course of events at the Cape, and the latest papere to hand from Holland print the following text of an " appeal which, signed by hundreds of reputable men throughout the Netherlands, aims at exciting a sentimental pity and compassion in the breasts of Englishmen for the rebellious Boers of the Transvaal" : —"Wo, the undersigned, as Dutch citizens, have followed with deep interest the lafco events affecting the people of the Transvaal, our own flesh and blood by derivation ; and we can no longer repress the feeling of wonder and regret experienced by us when the late

Government of England resolved to deprive the j.r'->lo o f '■heir national indep,,] er : .mil territory lish Crown, reasons of

, uf us at the time, and especially ci , i?rii ie Minister, entered an energetic protest; against the annexation of the Transvaal as an equally impolitic and unjust act. The people of the Transvaal continued to cherish the hope, and not without reason, that the wrong done them would again be made good, atill as all these expectations have been disappointed, their patience has been exhausted, and in despair they have rushed to arms. We may lament this act of theirs, but we find it intelligible. For are their forefathers not ours also —the men who, for eighty long and grievoiis years, struggled for the preservation of their national independence ? And shall the spirit of their ancestors be quenched among them ! No, Britons, you yourselves are a free people, you cannot do otherwise than sympathise with another, i£ comparatively unimportant race, which your powerful Government, it is true, can exterminate and scatter, but -which will never allow itself _ to be subjugated! And it is this feeling which encourages us to' direct this appeal to the sense of justice of ihe' British nation. The people of England cannot brook the dishonor which must inevitably Result from a struggle that is as unequal as it is tan just, from a struggle with a powerless wee , ,, with a people who wish for nothing further than to live in peace and quiet under their o-wn laws, cultivating the ground that has becometheir own through stress and peril. And we cherish the hope that this appeal of oure will not remain wholly unattended to. We are still inclined to believe that the voice of public opinion will give a powerful support to the present G-overnmenfc in England in order to enable her Majesty's Ministers to undo an act of injustice, which, to judge from the liberal professions of the Cabinet, and from its own particular views, should never have been planned and carried out."